


Christmas Reminiscing

by sian1359



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Attempt at Humor, Christmas, Christmas Party, F/M, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Not Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Compliant, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-10 22:19:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8941615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sian1359/pseuds/sian1359
Summary: Clint, Phil, and friends spend Christmas together and tell stories about past Christmases.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt was: After Christmas dinner, the team sits around and shares the strangest place they've spent Christmas. (#20) I included worst Christmases for a little more variety,
> 
> The story takes place in the happy kind of AU where Civil War did not happen, large parts of Agents of SHIELD seasons 2 & 3 did not happen, Tony & Pepper did not split, and all of the Avengers in Civil War are one team (excluding Spiderman and Antman). It's Christmas, and I wanted to tell one of those stories we were writing before the first Avengers movie came out about the team and Phil; now with more team.

 

*****

Phil had been a kid the last time he'd been out in a rural countryside at night in winter without it being part of a mission, with or without the snow falling. Too often, the uncomfortable waiting in the cold, or worse, trying to escape through fields and trees covered in snow blinded him to the beauty. Without the terror, adrenaline, or gunshots, it was rather magical. He felt infused with calm, peace, and a quiet happiness to be sharing this with Clint. Sad, too, that it had to end, but there was a different, crowded kind of joy waiting for them inside.

"It's time to go in," he notified Clint quietly, not willing to break the silence around them more than he had to.

Clint nodded. He took one last deep breath of the pure, biting old air and then pressed icy lips against Phil's cheek. "Thank you," he murmured. "I know you would have rather stayed indoors, maybe taken the opportunity to talk to Steve and Bucky –"

Phil hushed him with his own kiss, inordinately pleased that Clint hadn't protested or doubled-checked his own watch to confirm Phil's word. Regaining Clint's trust after Loki and dying, then returning to life but not to Clint, had taken much of the time during the few interactions that necessity had forced upon them. Phil had despaired not only for what he'd foolishly thrown away, but that he'd never have the opportunity to make things right. That, once he _had_ been forgiven, missions, responsibilities and simply life would prevent him from ever having moments like this with Clint again.  

Christmas was indeed a time of miracles.

"There will be time for that and, if there isn't," Phil told him, taking Clint's hand in his as they walked back toward the mansion and their friends, "you – we – come first."  

"So we can blow off supper with the troops and stay out here a while longer?" It was asked slyly, but not seriously. Clint was already removing the balaclava he'd been using to protect the top of his head and ears so that the falling snow could dust his hair on the way back, something he normally only did when he was ready to go in.  

"I love you, Clint, but missing supper or even just being late will most likely mean I'd lose out on getting another piece of Bucky's Butterscotch pie given the number of serum-enhanced people we have now, and Thor," Phil pointed out in his most solemn tone. "I'd forgotten it was my favorite, I hadn't had some in so long. Scandalous as it might be, his is better than my grandmother's version. It's not like we can't come back out before bed, if you want, anyway," he added. "With the rate of the snowfall, our tracks will be covered again and we can be the only one here in the world again."

"We did have some amazing pies this afternoon," Clint agreed, his ears now as red as his cheeks. "I certainly liked Maria's Ice Cream Jell-O Berry pie; the butterscotch was a little too sweet when you let me try a bite of yours. But if I eat another piece tonight, I'm definitely going to have to come out again to run a few laps."

They'd probably walked at least half a mile away earlier in the evening, taking their time. They made brisker time on the return trip.  

"I'd have to join you," Phil nodded. "It'd be worth it."

"I could chase you through the snow. Or you could chase me if you prefer," Clint offered with a hot and dirty grin.  

"Only if you promised to let me catch you this time," Phil couldn't help himself from responding.  

There'd been too many weeks after Sokovia, post Afterlife, and then nearly losing Daisy as well as his own life, when Phil had tried to reach out to Clint only to be ignored, rebuffed, or intercepted by one of the other Avengers. Even once he'd convinced Tony, of all people, that his need to make amends with Clint was more than politics or lip service, Clint had remained distant those first couple of months of reconnecting, initiating no contact, but at least no longer refusing to be in the same room as Phil, much less talk to him.  

Phil had never felt Clint had been trying to get even or trying to force Phil to experience the same sense of loneliness and betrayal he'd gone through. It hadn't made much of a difference when Phil retreated back to SHIELD and his team – his now closest friends – and felt abandoned anyway. Clint had always retreated when he got hurt, physically or emotionally. He'd be unapproachable, especially when his feelings were the cause of his pain, denying he'd had the feelings in the first place. It was facing that denial that forced Phil in to really understanding how Clint had to have felt after finding out Phil had come back from Loki killing him. Phil had done his own denying of their relationship's importance and lost himself in his new team and rebuilding SHIELD, rather than go to the effort to rebuild his and Clint's relationship.  It was that mistake that Phil refused to allow again, by either of them.

Clint's expression softened, because they had finally found their way again. "I always have, Phil, and I always will. We just forgot that for a time."

"Oh, please," Natasha complained, complete with gagging motions as she stepped out from the shadows that shrouded the area they were finally only a few steps away from; a backdoor that led into an old fashion mudroom.  

Although he and Clint had known for years that she had a playful side as well as the sarcastic or cynical side Natasha generally showed, this was the first time since Phil's resurrection it had resurfaced around him. Even after she'd eventually accepted his apology for how he hurt her and Clint both, she'd still been vocal with how foolish she'd thought Clint was to even consider trusting Phil with his heart again. At least she'd been willing to trust him watching her own back on a couple of missions, but it was nice to see her comfortable around him once more.  

"I already went through this gross phase of your relationship once. Nowhere does it say in the friendship manual that I have to deal with it twice."

"Actually, I think it does," Clint countered. "You just get to say I told you so without any consequences, not that you're going to have to. Is there a reason you came out other than to harass us?"

"Supper."

"Which we are here for."

"And this," she said with the smile that made mobsters and terrorists alike, pee their pants. "Since you're already wet."

She might not have Clint's preternatural accuracy, but Natasha was no slouch when it came to throwing weapons, be they knives, her shock discs, or snowballs. She'd been hiding two behind her back. Neither he or Clint had any opportunity to avoid them. The cold was shocking, and the wet immediately found its way down from Phil's face to his neck, and then under the neckline of his sweater despite how he'd bundled up in his overcoat and a muffler.  

Phil chose to interpret her throwing one at him instead of both at Clint as another indication she reconciled her feelings about his and Clint's rekindling romance. Retaliation on his part might be stretching her goodwill a little too much, however, not that Phil needed to. Since Clint had already been charging toward her as if moving might cock up her throw, he simply latched onto her waist when he reached her and lifted her off the ground. Before she could react in turn, he then twisted and fell back into one of the growing drifts, taking her with him. She shrieked, loud enough that several faces appeared at the floor to ceiling windows that lined the outer wall of the great room to the side of their door, with Steve even going so far as to open that wall's sliding door despite the cries about letting the snow in.

"You won't know when, Clinton Francis Barton," Natasha threatened as she dug herself out from under a couple of feet of snow. "But I will get you back for this."

"Yeah, yeah," Clint said mockingly as he got free and to his feet first, automatically reaching down to pull her up. "Revenge is a dish best served _cold_!" He tossed her in again, this time keeping his stance. Until she scissored her feet around his leg and bunched her knees back to reel him back in.

Knowing this might continue until one of them accidently got hurt, Phil pulled Clint up and into a loose cage of his arms while Steve fished Natasha out. She and Clint were both laughing so hard they couldn't get the holds or leverage they wanted to upend their captors before Phil and Steve successfully dragged them into the mudroom.

"Stop!" Steve ordered, when one of Natasha's kicks got a little uncomfortably close. "Fortunately, we've decided to serve supper as a buffet, so you have time to get dry and warm up, but only if you stop right now, Nat. We are not going to wait for you."

"Fine. Dad." Natasha had the surly schoolgirl tone and inflection down perfectly, not that she'd ever been allowed to talk back at that age. "But Clint started it."

"And your mom and I have finished it," Steve responded, with a wink at Phil. "Save your revenge for the training floor."

It took her a moment to realize Steve had teased her, her focus no doubt first going to some wicked ideas from his suggestion of getting even with Clint during training. "I thought Bucky was the mom," she then said amidst her returning laughter, her face as young and free as Phil had ever seen it.  

Curiously, Steve's turned as red as Phil had ever seen it. It looked like Clint had been holding out on some of the gossip.

Natasha wasn't through. Sometimes she couldn't help but go after someone's weak spot. "Are you stepping out on Bucky, _Dad_?"  

"Over my dead body," Clint responded with a grunt from tugging a recalcitrant boot off and, incidentally or maybe not, taking the heat off of Steve.  

It had pleased Phil's inner ten year old no end, to see how easy Clint was around Steve when Phil had gotten the chance to spend some real time with the Avengers.  

"I don't care if you are Captain America and Phil's first love. He's mine now."

"Yes I am," Phil promised while he shook out his overcoat. It wasn't worth denying the charge, since Phil still owned one of the largest collections of Captain America memorabilia in existence, something that Clint had preserved when everyone but Fury had thought Phil was dead. But he'd better take the time to sit down and explain to Clint that while meeting Steve had only served to enhance his admiration of the man, it had also helped Phil realize it was the idea of what Steve Rogers had stood for as Captain America, the ideal that Steve had _represented,_ that had been the basis of his attraction even as a kid, not so much the man himself.

Obviously Clint was mostly kidding. Phil knew there was a thread of honest fear and threat running through Clint, however, from a faulty sense of self-worth born during Clint's childhood. Phil had only made it worse when he'd thought Clint would be better off without Phil's baggage after Loki. This wasn't the time or place for thoughts of past mistakes, though, so Phil took a page out of Clint's own playbook to get things back to the merriment from before. To defuse tension or threats of things turning maudlin: go dirty or go funny.

"I wouldn't say no to the two of you fighting over me, though. Stripped down and oiled up, maybe best two of three throws?"

Clint and Steve made twin faces of dismay and distaste, in part no doubt from Natasha's "I'd watch that. We could sell out an arena," since they both resented being put on public display, than from any actual disgust at the thought of being exposed to each other's body.  

"I don't care if it is Christmas, Phil, but there are just some fantasies that aren't going to come true," Steve said good-naturedly.   

"And some that probably are," Natasha suggested, finger-combing her wet strands of hair. "You guys want to stay here and discuss them some more, go ahead. But I'm cold, wet, and hungry. No fantasy, no matter how creative or perverted can help that, but going inside can."

Steve made a show of looking at his watch before heading after her. "She's right," he said over his shoulder. "Food gets placed in eight minutes sharp, because Thor is already chomping at the bit and twenty minutes is all we could get him to promise he'd wait."

"We'll be there in seven," Clint promised, though from the heat in his eyes when he looked at Phil had Phil wondering if that was going to be true. Until Clint said, "I've a few fantasies of my own, but doing anything interesting in a mudroom isn't one of them. We've just got time to take a combat shower and change, then we can start with yours about pie."  

*********

Alright, boys and girls, guys and dolls," Tony immediately started as Phil and Clint came into the room. "And Agent," he added with a good-natured smile.  

From where she was mostly sitting in his lap instead of next to him on the loveseat, Pepper rolled her eyes but didn't bother to apologize for him; Tony was Tony, a fact that they both well knew. Phil figured he'd be paying for keeping his resurrection a secret from Tony pretty much forever or at least until he did something else to get Tony acting all affronted. Abuse, granted only petty and harmless, was the way Tony showed love, since that's how he'd learned it from his father.

Clint automatically flipped Tony off on Phil's behalf as he headed over to where Maria and Sam were painting Wanda's finger and toenails, a defense Phil had never asked for, but felt honored by regardless. As for himself, he simply turned a bland, non-expression Tony's direction, then slowly raised a single brow, something that drove Tony crazy since he couldn't do it himself.  

"I will figure that out," Tony responded, pointing in Phil's direction before twisting to chide Clint. "So rude, Birdbrain. And on Christmas. Didn't your pa – ah, no, it is Christmas, so I'll take the high road and not stoop to your level."  

Which was a pretty good save, given he'd about to say 'didn't your parents teach you better', Phil was certain. He wouldn't have been the first, nor did Phil think Clint would have been particularly upset even if Tony had finished, since his parents had been dead longer than anyone else's save for maybe Bruce's, and Clint had come to terms with his childhood well enough to stand a little teasing from friends. Especially ones that didn't mean any harm by it.

Still Tony should be encouraged for his discretion and sensitivity. Phil allowed warmth into his expression and gave Tony the barest of nods in acknowledgement and appreciation of what Tony had done.

Tony responded with a pleased yet surprised smile, then scowled to be caught caring what someone else might think about his behavior as he said, "Before we all make a mad dash for the leftovers which, beyond the sex, the presents which might include or lead to sex, and the original food, is the best thing about Christmas – "

"There was an orgy this morning, and I wasn't invited?" Maria asked, her tone as tight and controlled as it had ever been during her time as the Deputy Director of SHIELD, but the smile accompanying it something new.

"You're on tonight's roster, but please, no further discussing it with the children listening," Tony responded, not missing a beat as he winked and gestured broadly toward Wanda.

"I think the only child here is you, Tony," Wanda shot back.

"Not Clint?" Tony complained, but shifted gears immediately back to what he'd been saying. "Before we chow down and give ourselves new food comas, our good Captain is insisting – "

"No I'm not!" Steve yelled in protest from where he and Bucky were still doing something in the kitchen.

" – is _insisting_ that we take this time of celebration, that has brought us all here at this fabulous compound our munificent benefactor has opened up as the new Avengers Training Grounds and Command Center – "

"Is munificent a really word?" Wanda asked no one in particular, although Vision, unsurprisingly, opened his mouth to answer her. Wanda wasn't done with her questions, however, so he waited, standing behind her position on the couch and watching the nail painting proceedings with great care.

As was Thor, who sat next to Sam on the floor, so Natasha could meticulously braid tinsel into his hair.

Phil had little doubt both men would be taking Sam's role in the future, the thought of Vision doing this for Wanda something that Phil was trying not to let creep him out. Vision had been but one of the surprises that still had him reeling about the sordid mess of Ultron; along with synthetic tissue saving Clint's life, JARVIS' death, how close Clint had come to death a second time, and Fury keeping back a Helicarrier for his own purposes, the bastard.

"Could someone tell me how to spell it so I can look it up with the Google and the OED?" Wanda was asking so guilelessly that she had to be trolling them.

Successfully, Phil noted, with anyone who wasn't a spy in the room.

"It means _veľmi štedro_ , or great generosity, and there is no g in the word, although it does bear some common etymology with magnificent," Vision answered her, as expected, despite that she'd turned her widened eyes Tony's direction.

It seemed like picking on Tony was a team sport with the Avengers.

"Also, dear Wanda, it is not the Google, it's just Google." Vision added in gentle, apologetic tones.

Clint should never have shown her Teen Titans Go!.

The wicked little smile the former SHIELD agents had all seen twinkling behind her eyes, morphed into something sweeter when Vision said 'dear Wanda', and her thank you was genuine even though she'd been teasing Vision as much as the rest of them. Or he was the best troll/straight man Phil had ever seen.

Phil was having a hard time getting used the idea that Wanda and Vision seemed to be falling into a romantic relationship. Were Vision human, Phil would have just classified him as a non-binary/ACE/demiromantic and had no problems as long as Wanda knew and was okay with the boundaries that would have set for their relationship. But Vision wasn't human. On the other hand, JARVIS hadn't been human either, yet Phil had had no problems thinking and treating JARVIS as such, his brain accepting him as if he was just someone always on the other side of a comm. Since according to Clint, the basis of Vision's brain was what had been left of JARVIS's matrix, it should have been easier to accept Vision too, if not exactly easy.  Perhaps if Vision's personality wasn't so different from JARVIS'? Or his body wasn't synthetic and his 'life' granted by magic, along with Thor, Tony and Bruce?

Since he didn't think of himself as particularly bigoted, and he did try to figure out why certain things had him inching in that direction, Phil probably needed to talk to someone again about his prosthetic. Or his alien blood and the abomination of his resurrection. He still sometimes thought they both made him something other – something _less_ – than he'd once been, so it stood to reason he'd think the same thing of someone created by similar elements. That got him wondering if Clint had had problems with his own bit of synthetic rebuilding, something he'd not asked before, because he didn't want Clint to feel he had problems with it. That was definitely the kind of circular thinking that had no more place here tonight than his guilt and remorse for abandoning Clint for three years. He and Clint were good again, and he was back mostly feeling like himself, no doubt in a large part because of that. While the rest of his issues did need to be addressed, not tonight, when it was a time for family and celebration.

Something Tony was still trying to address, apparently.

" – as we are all here together at this spectacular mansion our _most_ munificent benefactor – "

"You mean you," Sam was the one who interrupted him this time.

"Yes, me. Aka, the Iconic Ironman, aka Tony Stark –"

"Super-genius," all of them chorused.

"Assholes," Tony chided. "Now, what was I saying again?"

"No, wait!" Pepper protested as kernels of popcorn flew at the two of them from multiple hands. Most of them missed either of them, but three suddenly hit in quick succession, directly on the end of Tony's nose. Clint's, of course.

"There was no insisting. I simply stated how I hoped that since we've all managed to make it for our Yule celebration, unlike how Thanksgiving turned out, everyone would stay over for a few days." Steve clarified when he and Bucky returned to the lounge with two large trays of drinks in various sizes and flavors by the cinnamon, coffee and chocolate odors wafting in competition, plus trays of cold meats from earlier in the day and cheeses, to go with the rest of what had been set out for people to eat.

"Between missions and call-outs, and everyone's personal business," Steve continued, "it's just been a while since we've all managed to be around at the same time. While I don't really miss the tower, sorry Tony, I do miss how when we were a smaller group, we all lived closed enough to meet up there on a regular basis."

"Alas, I will be rejoining Jane and Darcy at my Jane's family home on the morrow," Thor apologized as he rose from his seat on the floor and was the second in line for the food, after Bruce.  

Technically, Bruce hadn't been starting a line; he'd been arranging the sideboard to accommodate the last of the food, but Thor made a point of standing behind him after grabbing up a plate, leaving Bruce little choice but to grab one also.

"Perhaps all three of us could return here, though, after a couple more days have passed?"

"You three would be more than welcome," Steve assured Thor. "Doctor Selvig too, if he's available, and whether it's just a couple of us left at the compound or many of us."

Thor beamed before turning and filling his plate. "Tonight, then, we shall continue with our feasting in each other's company," he proclaimed loudly enough that no one trouble hearing his words even though he was facing the food, so therefore the wall. "As you have brought us the cups for drinking, would not games and songs now follow, in true _Jól_ fashion?"

"We could play _Never Have I Ever_ ," Rhodey suggested. He'd made sure Maria and Natasha took spots in front of him before looking to his own plate.  

"What is that?" Vision asked.

"A drinking game," Phil made the effort to be the one to answer first; if he was ever going to get used to Vision as a person, then he needed to treat him as one. "Someone names something they have never done, in the hopes of forcing those who have done it to take a drink. The ones who remain the most sober are the winners. It's not something I think would work so well in this crowd, since we have so many here that don't have common experiences due to where or when they come from," he added quickly before Tony or anyone else might accuse him of being a stick-in-the-mud.

"And because some of us don't drink," Clint said, shoeing Pepper away toward the food and taking over setting up a host of small tray tables she'd been pulling out of a cabinet so that people didn't have to hold their plates in their laps.  

"Or can't get drunk regardless of how much we have." Bucky didn't sound like he thought that was a feature of Zola's version of the Erskine's formula; rather that it was a flaw.

Phil knew that even though he was well versed in what history said of James Buchannan Barnes, he knew very little of how being the Winter Soldier had changed Bucky's personal likes and dislikes. He'd certainly never have pegged Bucky for being a big drinker, much less a drunk, but it was one thing to voluntarily restrict your intake, and quite another to have the effects of anything negated because of someone else. If there was anyone here who deserved to be able to get drunk and forget his life for however long, it would be Bucky Barnes.

"Word or trivia games would suffer from a similar problem," Natasha reminded them. "It's not much fun to play when you don't have any idea what someone is talking about."

"Physical contests should be out, too," Bruce suggested. "We all excel in our own areas, but we cannot compete on a level playing field, and I fear coming up with handicaps would only dissolve into arguments or at least discussion long enough that it wouldn't leave time to actually participate in something tonight."

"I suppose something like Cards Against Humanity would have to be out too?" Pepper asked.  "I would love to see how often we could make Steve blush."

"Not just Steve," Sam threw in. "I'm ex-military, but there are cards in that game that I can't repeat out loud. If I also had to explain some of them …" He just shook his head and found a new place to sit so he could take advantage of one of the trays.

"We could tell stories about ourselves," Phil offered, taking a seat on the large sectional couch in the hopes that at least Clint and Natasha would join him. "That's also a part of Yule."

"Stories about our childhood or something?" Wanda sounded wary.

"More like an embarrassing or odd incident," Maria clarified. "We could do it around a common theme. We should avoid ones that are part of the tragic backstories, though. I'd rather end the night laughing than crying."

"Weirdest place you've ever had sex?" Tony suggested, to the surprise of no one. Him taking a seat next to Bruce and gesturing for Pepper to sit on his other side, surprised no one either.

"Ah. In that I would have nothing to relate," Wanda said sadly as she, too, found a place to sit, her plate full of little portions of just about everything that had been laid out. "Sokovia was boring and had no weird places. And as I have only ever had the sex with my brother – "

Phil watched as Clint, still at the sideboard, dropped the spoon holding the ambrosia back into the bowl while Steve, at the other end, nearly shattered the cup he'd just picked up. Bucky took it from him before that happened, but he seemed the only one able to look unaffected by Wanda's declaration; Phil himself had ended up missing his mouth and smearing his cheek just a little with his forkful, while Tony and Pepper both started coughing as they swallowed wrong.

Wanda's eyes widened as everyone stopped what they'd been doing to look over at her, her expression turning to one of mortification and horror. She couldn't hold it, however, and it quickly dissolved into mischievousness. "Oh, my god, your faces," she barely got out through her laughter. "I can't believe how easy and gullible you all are."

"Who in the hell has been corrupting Wanda?" Rhodey sputtered, dropping down next to Maria.  

She and Natasha exchange satisfied glances, not that anyone but Clint and Phil knew them well enough to read their micro expressions. That had Phil revising his opinion about it – and apologizing to Clint in his head as he'd simply assumed Clint had been the culprit. It did appear as if most of the male Avengers were still treating Wanda as if she were their daughter, not their teammate, and a fragile one at that. Wanda might be younger than the others by a good ten or fifteen years, but she was no kid. And fragile was the last thing word Phil would associate with all the reports he'd read about the _Scarlet Witch_.

If they were to really quantify and compare power levels, Wanda had already shown she could confuse both the Hulk and Thor with her mind or stop them with her energy manipulations; affecting the rest of the Avengers had been even easier. Whether called an Inhuman or simply Enhanced, as long as she was able to keep her actions a surprise, Phil doubted anyone could stand up to her.

"Wouldn't weirdest sex also having most of us double up with the same story?" Bucky said, almost as guilelessly as Wanda had her question, which started Steve sputtering.

"What about strangest or worst place you ended up spending Christmas, Hanukkah, or Yule?" Sam suggested.

"You going lead by example?" Maria asked as he took the seat on her other side from Rhodey.

Sam shook his head. "Please, ladies first," he said with a big grin her direction. "The more embarrassing, the better, just like _you_ said."

Maria looked around to see if anyone was going to object or suggest a different topic. No one seemed so inclined. Steve even gestured for her to start.

"Okay. Well, this fits the strangest place. Few years back Vic and I – ah Victoria Hand, a fellow SHIELD agent who died in the Insight mess – decided to take the holiday up in the Catskills," Maria offered up.   

"Not very strange," Tony started, no doubt going for payback to how many times he'd been interrupted early.

"No, and it's not all that embarrassing, either," Maria said with the kind of grin that had scared junior agents. "We, like too many other people, headed out around noon on Christmas Eve back in 2002, thinking we could get there before the Nor'easter closed down the highways."

"Wait, you knew a Nor'easter was forecast and you still took off for the mountains?" Pepper asked.

Maria nodded. "We had booked a ski chalet in Windham because they host night skiing, and Vic was addicted to the slopes. I think we were hoping to get snowed in and get a couple extra days of vacation."

"Wait a minute," Phil protested. 2002? You two are the reason I got stuck working assignments with Blake at the Hub – "

"Yeah, sorry, but we deserved the time off. I'd worked Christmas all three years before then, and if you remember, I ended up bailing out Clint's and your ass in '01. That shithole assignment in Canada, just south of the Arctic Circle. When I got back from North Bumfuck – "

"That diamond mine was a full hundred and twenty miles south of the Arctic Circle, and the town was called Wekweètì by the First Nations people who live there," Clint corrected her. "Not North Bumfuck. I've been to all the Bumfucks. North Bumfuck is in – "

"Shut it," Maria interrupted back. "My story time. So, Vic and I are cruising up I-87, then turtle-crawling as the snow starts and the winds pick-up. We're no more than an hour out, but it's turning into whiteout conditions and then bam! We're in the middle of a multi-vehicle pile-up. One of sixty-nine cars and trucks, and when I said the middle, I meant it. We were in a reinforced SHIELD SUV, so we didn't sustain too much damage, but there were mangled cars and overturned trucks spilled out for miles fore and aft of our position. Rescue services are not going to get to us for hours, and they didn't. We spend the first couple hours rendering aid where we could, but eventually, there's about twenty of us just standing around, freezing our asses off now that the adrenaline crash is setting in.  

"We've handed out all of the emergency supplies, and did a little judicious redistribution with other peoples stuff as necessary, and now the sun's going down but not the wind. And the snow hadn't let up. It was probably negative degrees with the wind-chill, so hypothermia is going to be a concern for even the healthy people. There was no way everyone was going to be able to wait for services to get to us by running their heaters in their cars, without running out of gas, and we were too far from anywhere to make abandoning the cars and walking viable."

"That sounds most distressing," Vision commented. "The average wait time for accidents such as that is between six and nine hours for those victims who are not at either end of the accident. I imagine trying to manage the kind of rescue that would be needed at two or three in the morning would be even harder than conducting it at full light."

"And you would be right," Maria confirmed. "Not even SHIELD could have managed evacuating one hundred and twenty to fifty people from a situation like that without completely blowing our covert status, nor would the first generation transports we had to access the helicarrier at that time been able to accommodate more than five people at a time, assuming people would even trust us enough to be lifted out. Helicopters were out because of the snow. I think the state was trying to gather some busses, but the roads were really becoming impassible with the weather. One of those getting stuck or going off the road due to the ice wasn't going to help anyone."

Maria sipped her drink and then shook her head. "Sorry, I'm making what should have been a short, kinda uplifting story into a lot more than I intended. The point of it, regarding a strange Christmas, is that we celebrated Christmas Eve in the back of a truck trailer. One of the drivers was running empty and somehow didn't jack-knife or roll onto its side. He opened up the trailer and suggested a group of twenty or so of us get in out of the snow. So we grabbed up whatever coats, sleeping bags, blankets and the like we still had in our cars, our coolers or food supplies, along with flashlights, and climbed in. By sharing our resources, the sleeping bags protected everyone from the cold leeching out heat when we sat, and had blankets or coats to cover up in, and twenty-five bodies huddled within raised the ambient temperature to tolerable. When it got later, we had enough food and drink to have something of a supper, and before the kids dropped off to sleep, we sang carols to pass the time and make it feel more like Christmas. A couple more truckers did the same thing, and I think just about everyone ended up camping out with a group instead of trying to go it alone in their cars. It actually turned out to be one of the nicer Christmases I've had in recent years, and Vic even ended up recruiting that first truck driver into SHIELD because of his initiative and compassion. Mack ended up one of our top engineers and mechanics."

"Mack, as in Alphonso Mackenzie?" Clint asked.

Maria nodded and Phil felt he should tell the others Mack now worked for him at the New SHIELD. "Mack survived Insight and works with me now. He's still our top engineer and mechanic. Does pretty good out in the field, too."

"Wasn't he the one who chopped off your hand?" Natasha asked.

"And doing so saved my life," Phil made sure to answer, so none of the others might start thinking badly of Mack. "Its usefulness was his inspiration for wielding a custom axe blade to a shotgun, although the first iteration was made with a butcher knife on the fly in his own home to fight off Inhuman Primatives."

"I guess a chainsaw would to be too bulky and heavy to wield to his boomstick."  

The thoughtful look that came with Tony's observation would have raised Phil's eyebrows and heartrate, but he had a feeling Mack could hold his own against Tony and turn down any of the crazier things Tony might want to come up with. The two together, along with Fitz, could no doubt make something that had a ratcheting blade that would work paired to a shotgun, but Phil doubted they'd ever end up having the time, since what Mack had settled on worked just fine for him.

"I get that reference," Steve said, then proceeded to lean over and explain it to Bucky, while Vision filled Wanda in on Ash and the worlds of Evil Dead.

"That was rather sweet," Pepper said. "So should I go next?"

She got enthusiastic nods, leaving Phil to conclude that the others were having trouble coming up with something that fit the criteria. The one he was thinking of telling wasn't exactly over Christmas, but if he couldn't dredge up something better, he'd go with it anyway.

"Mine falls more in the wrong or worst place category, along with embarrassing. During my second year in college, my folks decided they'd come to me for Christmas instead of my flying out to them. I wanted to cook a traditional Christmas dinner, only I was living on campus, in a dorm, so that was out. Then one of my sorority sisters said she'd wanted to do the same thing for her parents, and we could share the kitchen at the sorority house. I decided on ham, she was doing turkey, and we'd coordinate and split the side dishes. It sounded perfect, and things started out okay, but she let her boyfriend talk her into deep frying the turkey."

"I've seen videos of that," Thor, of all people, commented. "Darcy brought a collection of the best, worst although not deadly turkey disasters two of your Thanksgivings ago."

Pepper grinned. "For all I know, one of those videos might have been ours. It turns out that it takes longer than forty-eight hours to thaw a twelve pound bird. It felt good to go, but I guess there was still some ice or maybe just a pocket of water deep inside."

Tony, of course, provided the set up for those who didn't get it. "Brucie, what happens when water comes in contact with boiling oil?"  

"Boilover," Bruce answered dutifully and then explained further for several still confused faces. "Water will sink to the bottom due to its higher density, but it soon vaporizes if the oil is hot enough. The steam expands nearly two thousand times its volume, which in turn will displace the oil upward and you either get a fireball when the oily mist ignites or streams of oil ejecting from the pot hot enough to cause third degree burns that can be fatal."

"We got the fireball and a small grass fire that got put out with a fire extinguisher," Pepper concluded her story. "But a neighbor called the fire department, who in turned called the police, as apparently we didn't have permission to be using the house. So I spent half of my Christmas day at the police station getting everything straightened out. Back then, there weren't nearly as many business open Christmas evening as they are now, so we ended up getting frozen pizza rolls and fruit cake in a can from a 24-hour Walgreens for Christmas dinner, as I did have a small microwave room in my dorm."

Everyone laughed or made sympathetic noises and Pepper laughed softly at the memory. Tony hugged her and whispered something in her ear that made her swat at him playfully.

"So, who's next?" Pepper then asked when the chuckles died down.

"While this is _my_ first Christmas, I have a memory from JARVIS that recalls a time when Edwin and his wife, Ana, spent their Christmas in jail themselves," Vision spoke up, surprising everyone. "It was in 1948, the year after Ana had gotten shot by Whitney Frost while they and Peggy Carter were all living in Los Angeles. Peggy, feeling guilty about Ana being laid up the Christmas before, and feeling the need to return home between the end of the SSR and the newly formed SHIELD, decided to treat Ana and Jarvis to a holiday back in London. The plan was for the three of them to attend Midnight Mass at Westminster Abbey on Christmas Eve with Peggy's family. First, though, the three stopped at St. Stephen's Tavern for a late dinner and private exchange of gifts before the traditional celebration Christmas morning."

Vision looked quite pleased that no one seemed uncomfortable with him telling his progenitor's tale. Tony seemed especially interested, as did Steve and Bucky who, like Phil, were most likely more interested in a new glimpse of Peggy Carter, while Tony was undoubtedly happy to hear something new of the man he cared so much about that he'd immortalized what he'd remembered of Edwin Jarvis' personality as an AI.  

All but Steve, Bucky, and Thor were now sitting back with a drink of choice, along with desert for a few of them, while the two Super Soldiers and the God still ate from a third plate of the finger foods and leftovers. Phil had his coveted piece of butterscotch pie in front of him with a nice coffee with enough Irish in it to taste, while Clint had foregone his ice cream pie for a few fried quark pancakes, called _syrniki_ , that Natasha had apparently spent the rest of the afternoon making.

"1948 was also the year the first of the Kinsey Reports was published in book form, as _The Sexual Behavior in the Human Male_. As Ana was quite progressive for her time, she presented that to Edwin as her Eve gift, with no thought of checking to see who might be watching the exchange and the unwrappings. Their waitress was quite scandalized, as was a local vicar, who had stopped in to pick up some dinner for the Bishop. Ana did not appreciate being called a Jezebel, but merely called the waitress a _głupia gęś_ , or silly goose. The waitress, not understanding Polish, but knowing what she'd called Ana first, assumed much worse and, basically, quite a row ensued, that eventually involved the police and ended up with a handful of people getting arrested, including Edwin, Ana, and Peggy, after Peggy threw a punch at one of the sharpies. Sorry, one of the officers."

That admission had both Steve and Bucky looking wistful, and Phil not surprised at all. Peggy Carter had never been afraid to stand up for what she thought was right, and had held her own with the Howling Commandos and with the male agents and management of the SSR.  

"I've got one from England, too," Bucky spoke up. "Christmas of '43, after Steve got us out of Austria – "  

"Buck, no!" Steve protested, but that only made Bucky's grin widen, and made everyone else want Bucky to continue.

Clint was practically vibrating next to Phil, leaving Phil to guess that Bucky had finally gotten comfortable enough around the others to start telling tales on Steve. Phil couldn't say he wasn't thrilled to be hearing this stuff himself, though his motivations were a little more pure than Clint's. And while Phil thought Steve's protest was real, he also suspected Steve didn't minding all that much. Having Bucky alive, with mostly restored memories, and here with them now instead of trying to kill him, was really all that mattered.  

The size of Bucky's grin ran commensurate to how red Steve's face was getting. "It turns out that Karl Marx is buried in one of the London cemeteries, place called Highgate, and Monty decided we all needed to go see his tomb. Highgate also had a reputation of being haunted, something Peggy pointed out, without thinking about how Dum Dum reacted to those kinds of things.   

"So, after we all stare at Marx's grave, which wasn't much to look at, let me tell ya – "

Something that had changed between 1943 and when Phil  had engaged in a shootout in the East Cemetery back in 2000, since he'd been able to use the monument with its massive bust of Marx's head as cover.

" – not compared to some of the other gravestones and carvings, we split up and go exploring a bit. I'm following Steve, who's sketching like mad, some of the angels and the like that are there. We turn a corner round a mausoleum and bang, right there is the specter of death in his black robe, standing as tall as Steve. Now, me and Steve, ain't neither of us a coward, but seeing that… "

Bucky was a natural at storytelling, unlike the ones who'd gone earlier who sounded more like they were giving a report or debrief. The return of Bucky's Brooklyn accent, softened by all the years he'd been away, and manner of speaking made it that much more absorbing. Grins were starting to spring up in anticipation of the punchline that most everyone had already figured out.

"You gotta understand, Colonel Phillips had given the Commandos tickets to the theatre a few nights earlier. Reading Dickens in school had been nothing to write home about, but seeing Christmas Carol live? That made an impression, even if everyone else there was dressed all hoity-toity and we just had our uniforms. So, seeing the ghost of Christmas Future there in front of us, well, Stevie just hauls back and hits him in the breadbasket. The ghost goes down with a pained grunt in Dum Dum's voice, and now we can see him, and see that the robe was just some curtain or sheeting probably used during air raids to blackout one of the mausoleums. Ends up that Steve broke three of Dum Dum's ribs and had to run and find a taxi to get back to camp while I stayed with Peggy and the boys to look after the dumb knucklehead until Steve got back with a couple of corpsmen and a truck to get us to the base hospital. We end up missing Christmas dinner and got base duty over New Year's Eve for taking the team out of commission for a couple weeks."

Even Steve laughed at the end of the story. He also threw his arm around Bucky's neck and gave him a noogie, which Bucky accepted good-naturedly.

"Natasha or Wanda, do you want to go next?" Steve asked after everyone kept their eyes on him speculatively.

"As I said before, I don't have that kind of story," Wanda said with a shrug. "Even after our parents died, Pietro and I found a way to celebrate Christmas with each other whether we had gifts to give or not. We'd go to Mass, then shared a dinner at home. I am Orthodox, if you are wondering."

"Ah, part of the Roman Catholic Church until ecclesiastical differences and theological disputes brought about the East-West Schism in 1054," Vision spoke. Mostly to himself as far as Phil could see. "You do not recognize the authority of the Pope."

"Amongst other differences," Wanda said with only a touch of sarcasm as it, like so many of Vision's statements, exemplified the difference between knowing something and understanding it.  

"Wanda, I'm sorry," Steve apologized suddenly. "I didn't even think to ask if you wanted to attend Mass with me and Bucky last night. I'm guessing now that it wouldn't have been the right one, but I still should have made sure you – "

"It is fine, Steve. Bucky," she included with an incline of her head. "I am not currently practicing, as I am still having trouble finding my faith after Von Strucker and Ultron. I gave you no indication that I was a believer or that I might be interested and, I assure you, if it had been important to me, I would have asked to come along though uninvited, since we all knew where the two of you were headed."

Steve still looked uncomfortable, and about to say something more, but stopped when Bucky stilled Steve's fidgeting hand and simply nodded in acknowledgement.  

"I did not ever celebrate Christmas until my first year in SHIELD," Natasha told them, breaking the silence before it became even more awkward. "So I do not have any strange or worst place where I celebrated either. I did have a mission in St. Martin, however, during one of the years I worked only for myself that happened over Christmas. It is a beautiful island in the Caribbean, south of the United States," she explained, likely mostly for Wanda's benefit. "The island's mean temperature year round is in the high seventies or low eighties. I was on the French side following someone, when I was spotted because we ended up on one of the nude beaches, and I was wearing clothes. During what turned into a shootout, between the two of us we demolished three sand snowmen, one plastic Santa Claus, and set the bar on the beach on fire, when one of his stray bullets ricocheted and broke one of the Christmas lights that had been strung throughout the palm fronds. Does that count?"

"Works for me," Maria answered, toasting Natasha with her hot toddy.  

Maria wasn't the type to get drunk, even in this company, but it was good to see that she'd filled the liaison slot Phil had basically abandoned by never taking it in the first place, even if there wasn't the same SHIELD to liaise with. Good to see she'd become comfortable enough to at least relax. Even with all her years at SHIELD before Insight, there had only been a few people she'd counted as friends; between her initial prickly personality, and then becoming Fury's right hand and enforcer, she'd kept herself apart from all but a few senior agents and staff.

While Maria was giving her approval and saluting Natasha, some of the others including Pepper, surprisingly – or maybe not, since Pepper had exquisite taste and an appreciation for beauty in many forms – were stuck on the thought of Natasha and a nude beach, most likely not even having heard the part about her being clothed, going by their slackened expressions. Clint, like Wanda, Maria, and Phil, wasn't so caught up, not that he didn't appreciate Natasha's beauty clothed or not, but it seemed as if he'd heard this story before. Phil hadn't, and while he was chuckling along with Clint, he was more amused by the way Natasha had so quickly fulfilled the requested storytelling, giving her audience something to dwell on instead of calling foul and asking questions if they realized just how few details Natasha had dispensed.

"I guess I could go next, since mine's from a similar place," Steve offered with a cough and his cheeks still a little pink. "It was in 1942, during my second USO tour. We were sent to Hawaii, doing shows at Pearl and Hickman, along with a stop at Tipler to visit the wounded. It was my first Christmas without snow, so I was feeling pretty blue. Some of the girls and a couple of the fellas in the band tried to convince me that waterskiing was a lot like ice-skating or even sledding. I might not have done either of those things all that much back in Brooklyn, but I knew that wasn't true. I still went, since I didn't want to be a party-pooper and ruin their Christmas too. It took me longer than it should have to figure out why the gals kept insisting I keep taking their turns at the end of the rope when I couldn't stand on the darn skies for more than a few seconds. At first I thought they were just curious about whether I'd ever get the hang of it. Then I thought some of them might be taking bets on it, or they were not keen on getting wet even though the water was warmer than bath water. No, it just turned out that wool stretches when it gets soaked, and they were enjoying the view."

And once more almost everyone's thoughts went to a naked body and/or sex. No matter anyone's gender or gender preferences, Steve's body – all of Steve's body --- was probably as perfect as one could get. Phil would have felt guilty for his own mental picture, but Clint was just as caught up so it was fine. Right up until Bucky winked at the two of them.

"And on that note … " Sam paused, and Tony, who'd also been about to speak, instead shook his head and gestured for Sam to continue. Sam did, after taking a deep breath and expelling it, along with whatever his mind had flashed to. "Course, mine sounds so boring now."

"That doesn't excuse you, Sergeant," Rhodey goaded, using his best command voice.

"Says the Colonel who's been hiding in Clint's usual spot like we'll forget he's even here," Sam shot back, not one to be intimidated.  

Now was not the time to bring up what Sam had just intimated about Clint, no matter how much Phil wanted that statement explained. Given what he'd seen over the last couple of days, Clint seemed fully integrated with the other Avengers; joking, teasing, and being teased in return. Known to disappear into shadowed corners in social situations seemed to contradict that assumption. But the ease in which Clint handled himself all day, voluntarily helping out, not to mention the war of wits he and Tony had engaged in during the present opening contradicted the hiding out. Leaving Phil to be the one in the dark, not that he intended to remain so once they retired to their room for the night.

"But I am a man of my word," Sam was saying when Phil tuned back in to the story. "For what it's worth, l spent my nineteenth Christmas locked inside the projection room of our campus movie theater." He paused again, for the round of laughter and catcalls.  

"I didn't know Riley from grade school like the two of you," Sam then continued, with a nod to Steve and Bucky, "but he became my best friend in just days after we met in AFROTC in college."

"Wait a minute. You were ROTC in college?" Rhodey broke in. "You should have come out of that a second louie, and looking to the pilot or combat manager track. Or a nurse if you wanted to stay on the medical side. What happened?"

"9/11 happened," Sam said in a subdued voice. "We decided not to wait to get our degrees, and enlisted the next day. But, before that, we were at Auburn University. First year, neither of us can afford to go home for Christmas. We get this idea, since there were dozens of other broke students also staying on campus, to reserve the movie theater in the Student Union on Christmas Eve, and show a night of MST3K movies, ending with the Mexican movie called _Santa Claus_ and, of course, _Santa Claus Conquers the Martians_. What we didn't count on was a couple other of our ROTC buddies deciding to prank us by locking us in the projector room."

"You said that twice," Tony interrupted with a wince. "If you were too broke to go home and too proud to ask for money from your folks, no way you guys could afford to rent the films."

"Still needed to be able to project the dvds, Tony. Not all of us have our own in home theater and an AI to run the tech."

"You love my home theater and that Friday accesses the movies from her servers so you don't even have to get up from your lounger chair unless you want more snacks or have to pee."

"Not disputing that. We can argue about something else though, if you want, or I can finish my damn story."

Tony waved both hands in Sam's direction in concession of the point, before someone else got involved.

"Thank you. So this guy named Goulden thinks it'd be funny to lock us in the room, not that we knew what had happened until the 26th. I don't think he intended to trap us all night or all of Christmas Day, but he got a call not too long afterward, from his girlfriend. She'd decided to surprise him by coming down to visit after telling him she wouldn't be able to. He went off to pick her up at the train station, with the thought of bringing her back to finish out the movies. Only she had another surprise, and had booked them into some country bed and breakfast down on the coast in Mobile, which was a three and a half hour drive. He doesn't even stop by his room to get more cloths or a kit, just heads off with her, forgetting all about us in his haste. We didn't get out by him remembering; one of the janitorial staff realized that chair set up against the door to the project room didn't belong there when they came in to prep for opening the student union back up on the 26th. We had some food and beer with us, so we weren't ravenous, but we did end up having to pee into our empty beer bottles since we were there in that little room for twenty-three hours."  

"None of the other students would let you out?" Thor asked, sounding appalled.

"They didn't even realize we were missing. We'd actually transferred all the movies onto a hard drive and set them in a play list to run one after the other automatically. We were supposed to set it going and get out, so that we could join everyone else, but Goulden pulled his prank and then took off. And we decided to catch the first one from up there since the seats were fantastic, and just stayed, not realizing we were trapped until we'd unhooked everything after the marathon was over and we tried the door. There was no one left around to hear us."

"Your cell phones didn't work from the room?" Pepper asked, with a sympathetic look on her face to offset Tony's expression of gleeful _schadenfreude_ , no doubt.

"It was 1999 and cell phones cost $200 on average, with the monthly plans running $50 to $100. We couldn't afford cell phones back then," Sam said matter-of-factly and with none of the scorn her assumption of privilege deserved.

Pepper winced and started to apologize, but Sam waived it off.  

"No harm, no foul, Pepper. You didn't mean anything by it, and it is hard to remember that we haven't always had the tech we can't live without now."

"Still, I should never have – "

"Really, it's fine. Save that kind of apology for something that deserves it. College students being broke is not a race thing."

"Way to bring down the room with your white privilege guilt, Pepper," Tony said in his most outraged tone, before turning it completely outrageous. "Rhodey, be a lamb and get me another hot cider, would you?"  

"Fuck, Tony, Really?" came from Clint, not Rhodey, who in turn borrowed one of Clint's signature moves and just flipped Tony off.

Sam and Rhodey exchanged a look that Phil thought meant nothing good for Tony at some point in the future, but that seemed to be the end of it. Tony, at least, got up to get his own drink. He also decided it was his turn.

"My story also takes place in the Caribbean, but instead of St. Martin, we went to St. Kits. It was my second year at MIT and we had gotten eighteen inches of snow over the weekend before Christmas," he started as he walked back over to Pepper and Bruce. "Once we get down there, however, the ungrateful wretches decide it's not Christmas without snow, so they propped open the doors leading to the fire stair in the back of the hotel, and concocted a batch of frozen gas with ice-like properties to pour down five levels of switchback stairs to make a slalom ski run. The ice rink got laid over the ground floor the stairs had lead us too, once we moved all the stored banquet tables and chairs off to the side. We used the spare bed mattresses on the bottom landing since we got moving pretty fast and didn't have ski poles to stop ourselves, and a few for padding so when the skaters spun off toward the walls, they didn't impale themselves on armrests or table legs. It was a little strange," Tony concluded, "not to mention a little embarrassing, since we were all nerds and geeks and had next to no physical coordination."

"It was also a movie, Tony," Sam protested. " _Real Genius_ , staring Val Kilmer."

"Where do you think they got the idea?" Tony countered. "The director and writers have admitted to interviewing a bunch of former students for half their ideas."

"So you were Mitch to Rhodey's Chris?" Bruce asked before taking a sip from whatever he was still drinking so Tony couldn't see his smile.

"I’m wounded, Brucie. I've never been that awkward around girls."

"Didn't that movie come out in 1985, Tony?" Phil asked. "You might have been a child prodigy, but not even you went to college when you were eight years old."

"I know you keep a lot of trivia in your head, Phil, but movie dates?" Maria said, laughing. "How in the hell did you remember what year Real Genius came out?"

"I was still dating my high school sweetheart in '85. Until she caught on that I was a little too interested in Kilmer's character during our after-movie nitpicking at the local ice cream parlor, and dumped me. Hard to forget that particular year when we'd been together for the five before it. "

"You only realized you were gay when you were in your twenties?" Sam asked, not sounding judgmental, but still amazed. "Did … were you – "

Phil put him out of his misery. "I knew I liked both genders well before then. But I'd gone from a small city in Wisconsin, to Northwestern in Chicago, and had already signed up to enter the Army after I graduated. It wasn't a good time to be out and proud."

"I didn't know you served," Steve commented.  

"1st Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment," Clint said proudly, before Phil could say anything.

"You were an Army Ranger?" Rhodey blurted in sheer surprise, then flushed when he realized how it could have been taken.

"Rangers lead the way," Phil replied with the regiment's slogan. "Operations Just Cause in Panama and Desert Storm in the Middle East. I got out before Somalia, leaving when Fury did, to follow him into SHIELD. I didn't have any idea he'd been a SHIELD agent already for years, or that his Army rank of Colonel had been earned back when I was in high school and he'd been CIA before SHIELD. Turned out it didn't really matter, either. I already knew about SHIELD's existence from my interest in the Howling Commandos and the SSR, and I was just damn glad to be recruited. Not that I was the reason Fury's cover was as a Ranger in Desert Storm."

"Please tell me I haven't disrespected an officer of a higher rank – "

"Retired as a Major, Colonel Rhodes. The only title I worry about is Agent, well, Director now, I guess, but never in this company. Not unless you need me as SHIELD's director."

"I love how my story turns to be all about Agent," Tony commented. "Please, continue. One of you can take _your_ turn."

"Sure, I'll go," Rhodey replied. "Short and sweet. Not so strange since I am still serving, and not _the_ worst Christmas I've had, but it is one I'd not care to repeat. Seven years back I was stationed at the Air Force Space Command at Peterson, in Colorado. I lost a bet and got tagged to play Santa for the base kids. I got sneezed on, peed on, and puked on, had my hair and beard pulled on, kneed in the balls, all so I could end up spending Christmas day, flat on my back at the hospital at the Academy with the goddamn swine flu."

He looked around with a scowl, daring someone to still be laughing as they'd done during his litany of complaints over how he'd been treated by the kids. No one was, but there were still a few smiles, and it was obvious that Tony was playing back the timeline in his head by his expression.

"So that's why you turned me down when I invited you to Aruba?" soon came predictably out of Tony's mouth.

"I would have turned you down anyway, Tones. I was still smarting from not being named one of NASA's astronaut candidates back in June, and was blaming my association with you. That I was getting punished because you shut down Stark Industries' weapons production, since I'd been the Air Force l liaison, and your friend."

The shock on Tony's face looked genuine. "You really thought that, Sugar Bear?"

Rhodey tipped his head and gave a half shrug. "I did at the time, yeah. I thought I'd been a perfect fit for the program, with my time in service, my degrees in aeronautics and engineering, my flight record. It was a hell of a lot easier to blame you than blame myself. I was also worried about you and your Iron Man gig, about how much I wanted to help you with it – and wanted to play with your armor myself. To the point where I was considering retiring. If you hadn't self-destructed so badly the following year – and given me the Mark II armor – and then pulled yourself back together and showed that you didn't really need me, I probably would have."

"You never told me that."

Rhodey shrugged again. "I never wanted to own up to it, even to myself. But that's enough of that for tonight. No tragic backstories, right? What about you, Thor? You got some crazy story about celebrating _Yule_?"

"Indeed I do," Thor answered with a somewhat manic grin. "I believe most of you have met the Lady Sif, one of Asgard's finest warriors and a formidable woman."

"Shouldn't that be the other way around?" Bucky whispered to Steve.

Steve shook his head. "You ever end up meeting her, you'll understand. Think if Peggy had been born into the warrior culture on Asgard"

"Sounds like a gal I really do need to meet."

"She is without peer, as you will see," Thor took back control. "This happened but when we were all just striplings; myself, the Lady Sif, Loki, and the Warriors Three."

Of course Thor looked to Phil and Clint when he mentioned Loki, his expression turning anxious. Even now, after three years, Loki's name rarely got mentioned. But Clint had mentioned how he and Thor had talked about it; how the brothers they grew up with were not who the brothers had become, and how it was important to remember the good times. Phil had reached his own peace, more or less, with Loki's role in his death, the peace made easier by admitting his own mistake in confronting the mad god as he had. That Thor still fretted about them was just another indication of how big Thor's heart was.

"Don't stop on our account," Phil told him.

Thor beamed. "Like many a young lad, I had taken to measuring my worth by how many of my father's accomplishments I could duplicate. A foolish road to take, I have later come to realize, but it is hard growing up in  a realm such as Asgard and not wish to become a valiant warrior and hero; to become worthy of the tales our bards tell. I must admit, too, that when I was younger, I was very proud, and not used to hearing the word no. My mother, wise woman that she is, sought to soften my heart without destroying my warrior spirit while not putting herself in conflict with my father."

"Nice setup, Fabio, but is there a story here?" Tony teased.  

"I at least do not borrow another's story – "

"Hey, mine actually was real. We just stole the idea from the movie, and I paid off the hotel to allow it."

"I apologize then," Thor conceded, "I should not have rendered my conclusion based on past tellings, only this one – "

"That sounds like you are calling me a perpetual liar, not apologizing," Tony pointed out. "Pepper," he turned to the one that knew him best. "Do I do that? I might exaggerate or misdirect, but I don't usually lie outright, right? And aren't apologies supposed to be genuine, not more disguised barbs?"

"Storytelling is done for entertainment, or for enlightenment, and I do believe you accomplished that tonight, Tony. As for the rest of it," she held both hands up, palms facing outward. "I'm not getting involved, other than to say this night is supposed to be about family and sharing the Christmas spirit."  

"Like my mother, you speak wisely, Lady Pepper. So I will cut to the entertaining part, as I understand you deem embarrassing oneself can be. Is this acceptable, friend Tony?"

Tony nodded, his complexion reddening just enough to show he regretted his initial interruption for how it had derailed things, Phil thought. He was still smiling – a real smile instead of the ones he'd crafted for the cameras – so Tony didn't seem to be becoming angry with either Pepper or Thor. As if realizing that’s how his reaction could be interpreted, however, he pulled Pepper into a hug with her back to his chest, and then leaned them both back against Bruce in a show of getting comfortable. Bruce, with a bemused raise of an eyebrow, simply shifted on the couch until his back pressed against the corner so that he could be comfortable himself, and accepted becoming something of a pillow, the bemusement turning to contentment at this show of affection.

It seemed that even after the three years the Avengers had now spent fighting and relaxing in each other's company, Bruce still had difficulty in believing his friends weren't afraid of the Hulk breaking loose.

"As Odin is father to all of the Aesir, not just my sire, he offered a grand present to be awarded at the rising of the new sun after the longest night, which signals the renewal of the world. When I spoke unkindly about the Lady Sif's desire to participate in the challenges set forth to win that present, mother reminded us that Yule is the celebration of renewal and rebirth and as thus, is also the celebration of motherhood and its potential, giving the Lady Sif or any woman more right to the present than the rest of us. At the inevitable protest, given father had proclaimed the challenges to be matters of prowess and skill, mother suggested that all who wished to be proven worthy have to perform these challenges in the garbs of maidens. Father agreed, as he has always loved wit as well as might. Consequently, many of us returned to the feast hall dressed as our sisters or mothers, miserable and humiliated, yet unwilling to concede. As you might imagine, the Lady Sif did prove the victor and I did not acquit myself well on that Yule."

"Your mother will be proud of you tonight," Steve said, looking pleased himself. "An arrogant man would not have told that story."

"I am happy to, though I will admit that I am glad my Lady Jane and, more so, the fearless Darcy was not here to hear it. I do believe I would be in for some fierce teasing from Darcy."

"Well, that's not going to happen with any of us," Steve assured him, his immediate look toward Tony, Clint, and Bucky a clear command. "Nor will we relate your story to either Jane or Darcy, leaving it for you to do when you feel comfortable."

Thor nodded, at first appearing delighted before his expression shifted toward uneasy, as the last of Steve's words also offered a clear suggestion that Thor should tell Jane and Darcy, at least at some point.

"So who do we have left?" Maria asked from the sideboard with a few deserts still remaining.

"Clint and Phil," Natasha said quickly and with a slightly terrifying smile.  

Phil hadn't intended to skip out, although he still wasn't sure what story he'd contribute, but it would seem Natasha was telling them if they didn't each come up with an appropriate story, she would.

"And Bruce," Sam chimed in.

"I'll go next, if you two don't mind," Bruce offered.  

Tony patted him on the arm that was wrapped around both Tony and Pepper, while Clint saluted him with his mug of no doubt cool hot chocolate, not that Clint would mind. Chocolate had been scarce in Clint's childhood, then tasteless and simply fuel during his military service, he'd confided once to Phil. After he'd joined SHIELD, he had access to an international variety, yet he rarely ate any since overweight agents didn't last too long in the field. So to him, it was still a treat.

"I'm sorry to say, my story doesn't take place on Christmas, but it is Christmas related, so I'm hoping it will suffice," Bruce started with an apology. "It's also recent, having taken place in early December, 2013."

Having something to tell after they'd all met seemed to intrigue the rest of the Avengers; Phil was curious himself, since Bruce rarely spoke up until it was in answer to a question, and even then he only got loquacious when it was about science.

"After those couple of times we met Thor's friends during the call-outs we had in our first year as Avengers, and then seeing the elves that showed up in Greenwich, the Other Guy started wondering before getting obsessed with how Thor and his friends call themselves gods. He wanted to know if some of the other old tales were true and, since it was December, his focus turned to Saint Nick. No matter how I tried to convince him Santa Claus _wasn't_ real, it got to the point where all I could do was let him take control and go bounding up to the Arctic to look for the North Pole. He wasn't pleased to find out the geographical north pole doesn't have elves and a workshop. Fortunately, he did let me talk him out of going under the sea to check the actual coordinates, after we broke into the Russian base that was shut down for winter to check their readings. Even he was feeling the cold once we got above the Arctic Circle."  

It took a few moments for the words, and then the concept to get processed. Tony was the one who started chuckling first and was soon joined by some of the others, helped on by the expression of wounded exasperation on Bruce's face. Phil found the story rather sad, although he could see the humor in it well enough. He'd not had too many interactions with the Hulk, but Clint had spoken often of how childlike the Hulk was when he wasn't striking out in anger or pain. After realizing he was bi, with a preference for men, Phil had assumed he'd never become a father, then after joining SHIELD, he'd made the decision not to, for fear of something happening and either putting the child in danger or leaving the them an orphan. There were times when he still thought about how it might be though, raising one, and at the moment, all he could feel from Bruce's story was the sharp regret of having to witness someone losing another part of their innocence from learning that Santa Claus wasn't real.  

While every child seemed to recover from it – he certainly couldn't remember his own trauma from the discovery after all – he still wondered if their parents really did.

"So, I suppose the two of you are going to share the same story?" Sam was suddenly asking, looking directly at Clint and Phil.

Clint shrugged. "We could, since the best, worst one happened in the mid-nineties and did involve the both of us. We were in Moscow, and Phil was just finishing up with our agents in place while I'd gone ahead to get our car. Instead of Phil coming out and joining me, the whole damn building goes into lockdown because it's been infiltrated by Chechnyan separatists, and I end up spending the rest of Christmas Eve into Christmas morning running between floors after I had to break into the building in the first place, doing what I could to take out the terrorists before too many hostages were killed – "

"Whoa, wait a minute," Sam protested, the same time that Steve said:

"I'm pretty sure that was a movie that I watched a few months ago."

"Yeah, _Die Hard_ ," Bucky identified what they'd apparently watched together. "At least you picked a good movie to steal the plot from," he added.

"Everyone else has played it fair, Tweety, other than me," Tony joined the castigating. "But then all of my Christmases were weird or at least non-traditional so how could I pick one from the rest. Surely you have some appropriate story from your circus days, or – "

"Fine," Clint acquiesced with a tight smile and tone.  

It softened when Phil not so surreptitiously shifted and took Clint's hand into his before bringing it up and pressing a kiss to the back of it. Clint's story was true; something that Maria knew as well as Phil, but Clint shook his head in answer to her expression of query. Natasha picked up on the exchange and narrowed her own eyes, even more ready to defend Clint, but again Clint waved her off with a quickly signed 'no' with the hand Phil hadn't kept in his.  

Apparently, Clint had decided he had another story that would work better. Something that Phil appreciated, as what had happened that night in Moscow, while not Budapest bad, had still been a lot more violent, bloody, and nerve-ridden than what had happened in the _Die Hard_ movie. Although Phil could enjoy movies like that, there were parts of John McClane's ordeal which were hard to watch for him because Phil knew what it felt like to walk across broken glass in bare feet, and because he's had to watch Clint and other agents take those kind of risks and hurts because of his orders. Or because, like Moscow, he'd been one of the hostages and in no position to help until close to the end.

"Fine," Clint repeated, "because this one is better."

He sounded satisfied now, not stressed, which did wonders for Phil's own stress.

"We'll file this one under the strange category. It was my first year at SHIELD – "

Phil couldn't help but sit up a little straighter; clinch Clint's hand a little tighter, as this was a story he, himself, had never heard.  

" –  and I've been there maybe five, six weeks. I don't know anybody because I don't trust anyone there. All of the other new recruits that year either came from one of the other alphabet agencies or someone's military, while I was approached on the street, and most of them spent some time attending classes and undergoing training at the Academy of Operations if they were tagged to become agents or specialists, while I went straight into missions. _My_ SHIELD basics were scheduled for a later date to be determined which, incidentally, never happened, at least in the formal, standard sense.  

"So it's Christmas, and I don't give a shit, since I didn't have too many memories of Christmases past to hold onto. I get called into Fury's office. I'm figuring I'm the new guy, low on the totem pole, of course I'm going to get the mission that needs to be done on Christmas if I'm lucky, or stuck desk duty more likely. And I'm pissed about it, even though I didn't have any plans or anywhere to go to celebrate." Clint coughed at that point, his expression one of chagrin.

"When you say you're angry all the time, Bruce, I get it. Back then, that was me, angry at myself as much as at the world, and I didn't care that I was alienating everyone, including the people who could have helped me level out. SHIELD needed my eye and my aim and I needed the safety net they provided from getting arrested or getting killed, but that was all it was, as far as I knew or cared. I pushed every button, crossed almost every line, pretty much dared them to cast me out or try to kill me, because that's what I was used to. I took pride in being a stupid bastard."

Once more Phil squeezed Clint's hand, to offer what comfort he could even though he knew Clint wasn't looking for comfort or  any sympathy. He was right, about all of it, including how close SHIELD had come in those first months to cutting their loses with him. Even Phil hadn't been able to see what Fury had, hadn't believed what they might get in the end could ever be worth what they were having to put up with in the beginning. It was because of that blindness that Phil had supported Clint when he played Fury's role and brought in Natasha instead of killing the Black Widow; he still hadn't been able to see what Clint had, but he had _believed_.

"Fury tells me to leave my gear, to grab my coat, and to follow him. For once I was impressed," Clint admitted. "The high man on the pole taking the crap job? Maybe SHIELD was different… better than everyone else I'd worked with. I was a bit put out to have to leave my bow, but they'd been hammering at me to work with other weapons, and I wasn't stupid, sometimes a bullet left a better message. Or no message at all, compared to being about the only guy in the world whose calling card was an arrow. I'm still thinking this, trying to figure out the op, even as Fury is driving through Christmas Eve traffic, taking us north.

"We get to Baltimore, almost two hours after we've left, and Fury's said nothing. Not just about the mission, but literally nothing after he barked at me to put my seatbelt on, and that I could pick the music station as long as it was Christmas music, 'because it's fucking Christmas, Barton.'"

Clint's Fury impersonation was spot on, one of the best, but almost anyone could manage a credible one, as long as they put fucking somewhere in what they said.

"Baltimore has it's little bit of waterfront, its big ass airport and warehouse district, and all of downtown, which is where I figure we're going, but Fury turns west, away from all that and out into the suburbs. At this point I'm getting nervous, because not even I was so enraged back then that I didn't care if I had to take someone down in front of their family on Christmas Eve."

Phil couldn't help it; he leaned over to kiss Clint's cheek as he's figured out where Clint's going with this story. That breaks the tension of the others. Maria, Phil's pretty sure, figured it out too, but the others, even Natasha, look as bewildered and as apprehensive as Clint must have felt back then.

Clint looked over his shoulder to Phil with a question in his eyes and leaned his body Phil's direction as he released a little of his own tension, something Phil's happy to interpret as a request to be allowed to do what Tony and Pepper have with Bruce. Tugging just enough on their joined hands, Phil shifted and brought Clint back with him as he leaned against his own corner of their loveseat.  

"Fury finally pulls over to the curb of a street lined with old, but well maintained houses, half of which are decorated. The house we're in front of us has a shitload of strung Christmas lights on as well as the porch and garage lights, but there's a house a couple down that I figure is our destination; its front already has cars parked there, plus it's rarely the best idea to park right in front of your target anyway. He gestures for me to get out, does the same, and walks back to the trunk. I'm still not keen on doing any kind of job in a place like this, but I know what comes next, so I join him at the back of the car, prepared to make at least one snide remark about the weapon he or whoever picked out for me to use. Only once he opens it, there's no rifle case or bag of flashbangs and Tasers, just a trunkful of wrapped Christmas presents.

" Fury says, 'Don't just stand there with your mouth open, Barton. We both carry our share, we don't gotta make two trips.'"

"Are you telling me that Nick Fury took you home for Christmas?" Tony asked, his tone wavering between shock, glee, and horror.

"To his mother's house," Clint confirmed, now melting bonelessly against Phil to be done with the story, and to bask in the awe the others were radiating.

"So Phil didn't recruit you?" Steve finally said after nearly a minute of silence. "Rumlow had said Phil had chased you down and had to shoot you to get you to even talk to him."

Phil didn't need to see Clint's grin to know it was there before he heard it in Clint's voice.  

"That was a rumor my SO, Melinda May had started, back in like my third year, after she and I got back from a mission in Bolivia. We'd taken longer than we should have, messing up the start of one of Phil's missions that he wanted Melinda to run from the Hub," Clint explained with a grin.  

Phil couldn't smile himself; he knew the rest of the story. He nodded though and let Clint go on, willing to support whatever spin Clint wanted to put on it.  

"Phil found out the delay had been my doing, though it had been justified, and he threatened to shoot me if I did something like that again. I, in turn, accused him of being jealous that Mel liked me better despite her getting stuck as my SO instead of choosing me, and one of Phil's team took a swing at me, shouting something about insubordination. Somehow in the scuffle that followed, my gun went off and clipped my leg. Mel and Phil had both seen that my hands were firmly involved in taking down two other guys, but they couldn't tell who's hand had grabbed for it or whether shifting the safety off had been intentional or not. The whole lot of us was put on administrative leave, including Mel and Phil for not heading things off before a shot got fired, and afterward, over the years, the story morphed into what you heard, because it was a lot funnier than what had really happened, and because no one had believed Fury had brought me in even before that. But Fury did, and did a lot of the work in making me more than just a weapon, starting with that Christmas."

"I'd say aw, and then gag, but I'm still too caught up in the idea that Fury even celebrates Christmas," Tony said. "Is Fury's mom – "

"She made me feel welcome and loved, Tony, even though I was scared shitless. And she didn't take any shit from Fury, which I found hysterical. Didn't take any from me later on, after I got to know her, either. She died about ten years ago. Believe me, I cried."

"I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to meet her." Pepper said it just before Steve could, but everyone else who hadn't ever met Evelyn Fury was nodding their heads.  

"Well, I think we have our winner there for strangest Christmas, spending it with Fury," Tony joked, never comfortable with silence or heavy emotion. "Unless you can top it, Agent?"

Phil shrugged. "All I've got is something like Bruce's, I guess. Not on Christmas, but as part of Yule. To celebrate finding out about my own rebirth, Thor took me hunting for bilgesnipe for the _Jólablót_ , the Yule sacrifice."

"It is quite the epic tale," Thor confirmed with a nod that made the tinsel in his hair glitter. The sorrowful moment was broken and the protests began.

"You did not," Rhodey protested, while Sam pouted and asked: "Thor? Really? Why weren't the rest of us invited?"

"What in the hell is a bilgesnipe?" Bucky wanted to know.

 -- finis --   

 

 


End file.
